Burma’s Pain

Five days after the storm, aid is crawling toward the most devastated areas of Burma. Food and supplies, unloaded from a United Nations container in the capital, Rangoon, on Tuesday afternoon, are beginning their slow trek toward the Ayeyarwady region of the country, the area hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis. Trucks stocked with water, tarps and other supplies are inching their way along roads strewn with uprooted trees and debris toward the lower delta. When necessary, U.N. workers get out and clear the roads by hand, even constructing logistical bridges in order to get the aid where it is needed most. When the roads disappear under water, supplies will be transferred to boats. "The entire lower region is flooded, which means we have to take the supplies by boat, and that adds a day," says Richard Horsey, spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).

Details of Nargis's destruction are still trickling in, but according to the few journalists and aid workers on the ground, Burma—also known as Myanmar—is facing the worst natural disaster in its history. The storm, which struck the country late Friday with winds of up to 125 miles per hour, caused waves up to 12 feet high in the Ayeyarwady delta region. According to a Burmese government spokesman, the surge destroyed 95 percent of the homes in the region. Official state media puts the death toll above 22,000, with an additional 41,000 missing, and more than a million people left homeless. Some officials have said the toll could reach as high as 100,000. The storm affected 24 million people, 6 million in Rangoon alone; the capital reportedly resembles a war zone, with toppled telephone poles and burst water pipes. In the Ayeyarwady area, which supplies the country with an estimated 70 percent of its rice, paddies had already been planted for the rice crop. The fields are now under water, causing unknown damage to the country's primary food source at a time when the world is in the throes of a global food crisis.

Politically, too, Cyclone Nargis hit Burma at an extremely delicate time. Last September the military-led government was widely criticized for its crackdown on prodemocracy protests led by Buddhist monks. Government soldiers opened fire on protestors, killing 10 by the government's official count and some 200 according to dissident groups, who said that more than 6,000 were detained. The cyclone and its aftermath could be the biggest challenge the dictatorial junta has yet to face, as residents become increasingly angry over the lack of assistance coming from their leaders. According to witnesses in the country, the cyclone-hit roads are being cleared not by the government but by the people themselves, including monks and nuns.

There was initial concern that the junta, known for its extreme xenophobia and paranoia, would not let relief agencies into the country. Those fears appeared unfounded when government officials publicly admitted the scale of the disaster and appealed for international assistance. On Tuesday the Royal Thai Air Force flew in the first shipment of medical and food aid; another plane arrived from China. According to Chris Kaye, director of the World Food Program in Burma, the government has provided "valuable cooperation," but much more cooperation will be needed in the short term to meet the needs of the hardest-hit.

Even while the government publicly appeals for aid, however, scores of relief workers from various agencies are sitting in Bangkok waiting for visas to enter the country. Aside from the materials brought in from Thailand and China, the supplies now getting through were pre-positioned by agencies before the disaster struck. Once additional aid is allowed in, relief workers will face the enormous task of getting it to the flooded lower delta region, where more than a million are believed to be without shelter, water, food, or sanitation. "The constraint is getting out to the affected population. Whole townships are underwater," says Horsey of UNOCHA.

The bottleneck is not getting supplies to Rangoon but getting them out to the countryside. Another concern is fuel. Stocks, including natural gas for cooking, are running low, and there is no domestic capability. The main port in Rangoon, which was badly damaged, is closed. If fuel stocks run low, that could hamper relief efforts, says Horsey.